Children carrying stuffed teddy bears and adults asking for the killers to come forward gathered on New Orleans' West Bank Thursday near the scene of a drive-by shooting that killed an infant and his father the night before.

Dozens of people, many relatives and friends of Deshawn Butler, 25, and his son, Deshawn Kinard, 7 months, walked together, some hand-in-hand, across lanes of the Crescent City Connection to General de Gaulle Drive in Algiers, where gunfire erupted Wednesday around 9 p.m.

The mourners, braving rush-hour traffic and winter weather, stood close together near the foot of the U.S. 90 bridge, holding candles and bowing their heads in prayer.

The slain child's mother, 27-year-old Amy Kinard, spoke briefly with reporters before being led away by friends, sobbing.

Kinard was driving a Honda sedan Wednesday night with her son in a car seat in the back, the baby's father next to him, and Kinard's friend in the passenger front seat, when at least one gunman opened fire from a dark SUV. There were on General de Gaulle, and she sped up the ramp toward the old tollbooth of the Crescent City Connection, got out of the car and grabbed her dying child.

Police said the shooting was gang-related. Butler, NOPD said, was part of an Algiers street gang called the Fischer Fools that was feuding with another group, the Hot Block. No one had been arrested by late Thursday.

Kinard pleaded for the killers come forward.

"Why would you do this?" she asked. "Please come forward and realize what you've done."

Butler's stepmother, Dionne Smith, 42, called her son a "real bubbly person."

"It's a tragedy. It's crazy -- it just doesn't make sense," Smith said.

She called her step-grandson "an innocent little baby."

Butler's mother, Patrice Butler, 46, stood quietly in the back, holding a photograph of her son holding little Deshawn in his arms.

"He loved to clown around and crack jokes," Smith said of Butler. "He was always with Deshawn. He loved him. He loved him."

Betty Russel, Kinard's aunt, led the group in prayer during the vigil.

"Whoever the person or persons are who did this - I hope you have it in your hearts to come forward. Please turn yourself in," Russell said. "It's time for us to stop this senseless violence ... I know somebody knows something. We ask you to come forward, just think - who could be next?"